


He was a fox.

by Sy_l



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Blood, M/M, Possession, Spooky, or at least it's supposed to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 02:59:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12334116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sy_l/pseuds/Sy_l
Summary: On the first night, Yuuri woke up to the full moon, alone in their bed. He rose on his forearms and glanced around the bedroom sleepily. He spotted his husband, standing motionless by the window, and a spark of guilt ran up his spine, chasing any trace of sleep left in his mind. He quietly stood up and approached Victor, glancing above his shoulder down the street.“Vitya?” he called again, making his voice as soft as he could. “What’s happening?”-For months, something has been happening with Yuuri. Neither him nor Victor can really explain it, but it doesn't feel like it's just a disease. And it's breaking them apart.





	He was a fox.

“Victor?”

**On the first night, Yuuri woke up to the full moon, alone in their bed.** He rose on his forearms and glanced around the bedroom sleepily. He spotted his husband, standing motionless by the window, and a spark of guilt ran up his spine, chasing any trace of sleep left in his mind. He quietly stood up and approached Victor, glancing above his shoulder down the street.

“Vitya?” he called again, making his voice as soft as he could. “What’s happening?”

“Hmm?” Victor suddenly snapped out of whatever was going on in his head and turned around to Yuuri when he felt the hand on his arm. “I was just thinking. Couldn’t sleep.”

Yuuri’s chest hurt. He scooted closer to Victor and put his head on the older man’s shoulder, his arms around his waist, and stayed quietly there.

“I love you,” he said faintly when the silence finally became too much.

“I love you too.” Victor answered, but his voice lacked any kind of its usual warmth. The words felt like they were nothing but a habit anymore, and Yuuri’s heart sank even deeper.

_ What had happened to them? _

It had started with panic attacks. Neither of them had thought about it much. They were not that unusual. They didn’t give it much thought until they turned into night terrors, until Yuuri ended up in a hospital bed, doctors explaining there was a tumor in his brain and there was nothing they could do about it now. It was too late.

From that moment it all went wrong. Yuuri had felt more and more estranged from himself. He would disappear in the middle of the night and be found the next morning at the rim of the woods, wearing the exact same clothes he had been when he went to sleep. There were the absences, the loss of control and memory. Victor had told him about those nights he found him ordering things online at midnight, unresponsive to his voice. Every trace and memory of his night shoppings were gone by the morning. Something had literally taken control of him.

_ Except that was impossible. Wasn’t it? _

“Did I...” he started.

Victor gave him a hint of interest.

“Did something happen with me?”

“I just never know when something will.” Victor blurted out. “It’s getting hard to sleep.”

Something seemed to startle him in Yuuri’s expression and his own softened. With guilt written all over his face, he averted his eyes.

“I’m sorry” He said. Yuuri tensed against him and he gripped Victor closer to him. “I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. It’s not your fault.”

Yuuri didn’t think he would have the strength to answer without hearing his voice crack.

“I’m sorry,” Victor said again, his arms finally closing around Yuuri’s waist. His head nuzzled into his neck. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I love you.”

Yuuri cried.

**On the second night, Yuuri had a dream.** He was a fox. Well, he wasn’t really, but he knew he was a fox. Similarly to those nights your house is suddenly some box. It doesn’t make any sense, but still, you know it’s your home, right? It doesn’t feel wrong, it just is what it is. He was a fox, and the fox didn’t want anyone to know he wasn’t Yuuri.

Victor was making breakfast in the kitchen, blissfully unaware that it was still the middle of the night. Or maybe he didn’t care, Yuuri was unsure.

“Vitya?” he called sleepily, the lights of the living room dazzling him as he left the darkness of the bedroom. His head ached slightly. He brought a hand to his neck and massaged his nape, his fingers brushing against a small scar he didn’t even notice anymore before he let his arm down again. Victor hummed from his place near the stove, flashed him a smile, but something felt off. Something always felt off ever since the disease had started to take over him.

Victor had stopped talking to him about it so he never knew what was going on in his head. All he could feel was the empty sheets whenever his husband couldn’t sleep. All he could hear was the timbre in his voice that painfully lacked its initial fondness, even though Victor kept telling him he loved him. All he could see was the tired face and the pale skin of the man he swore to love and protect until death parted them and beyond. Slowly, he had begun to believe it: maybe Victor had fallen out of love for him. Maybe his sickness had  _ broken them  _ to the point his own husband was afraid of him.

Yet Victor’s voice at that moment felt like he was back home again. And maybe it was all just a dream and maybe the fox HAD followed him out of his sleep, but he wanted to believe it. He needed to believe it. So, he came closer to Victor, wrapped his arms around his waist and placed his head on his shoulder. Victor let himself fall into Yuuri’s arms, humming quietly a song Yuuri loved above them all. Suddenly they were back to the moment Yuuri first moved there with Victor, that time when the small apartment still felt foreign, and yet Victor’s presence made it feel like home. Nowadays, nothing felt like home anymore.

“We were born to make history…” Victor’s soft singing warmed Yuuri’s heart. “Remember when we skated to that song together, Zolotse?”

Yuuri nodded and indulged himself in the warmth of Victor’s back, the softness coming from the song and the smell of the breakfast Victor was cooking. It felt good, so good he forgot they hadn’t felt like that in months. He forgot the foreign presence he sometimes caught in his thoughts, the underlying urge for violence, the sadness, and even the fact that less than one hour earlier, their relationship was still falling apart. He happily nuzzled Victor’s neck with his nose and hummed contentedly.

He opened his eyes when he didn’t hear the humming anymore. He frowned. Victor’s warmth was gone and he was standing alone between the counter and the kitchen island unit. He didn’t remember anything, and it felt like nothing but a second had passed, he suddenly felt cold, like the entire room temperature had dropped by several degrees. His stomach heaved when he realised the stove was stained with red. His body shaking with fear, he forced himself to look around. Red was staining everything from the counter to the floor. Blood. Blood was everywhere and Victor’s body was lying inert in the middle of it. He felt nauseous. He realised he was holding a knife when it fell with a thud to the floor. He felt an exhilaration that wasn’t his, anger that wasn’t his, confusion and terror that melted together and he failed to comprehend anything else as he felt the fox’s hunger growing inside of him. He was terrified. He fell to his knees and took Victor’s body into his arms, whispering words that didn’t make any sense. _ What did he do? _

Yuuri heard himself scream before he even woke up. By his side, Victor was already holding him tightly as he was softly fondling his hair to help him calm down. The silver haired man seemed so weary it hurt. It hurt so much.

He was a fox. Inside of him, he felt the fox move, gnawing at his insides with delight.

**  
** **On the third night, Victor felt something had changed.**

Yuuri slept without even moving at all that night, which hadn’t happened since he got diagnosed with brain cancer. He was so still that Victor wondered for a second if he wasn’t dead. He thought he wasn’t able to feel anymore, yet his heart clenched painfully. All of the emotions he had tried to keep at bay for months backlashed at him with violence. The thought of losing Yuuri still felt like the end of the world.

He had wanted to care for Yuuri to the best of his ability. He had wanted to cradle him on his distressed nights until he would finally fall asleep, and for all of his kisses to take the nightmares and the hallucinations away. But, somewhere along the way, Victor had lost sight of it all to the point he didn’t recognise himself at all sometimes. To the point that, as egoistic as it was, part of him wished he could not feel anything anymore.

But none of that mattered that night as for the first time in weeks, he felt everything: the care for his husband, the hurt that he couldn’t do anything, the fear of what would happen next, the need to protect Yuuri no matter what. He was terrified, angry at himself for letting fear and hurt change him and for the way he had acted towards the love of his life. He felt anger run through him when he remembered Yuuri’s pained reaction, two nights before. He instinctively got closer to the Japanese man and circled his waist.

He was terrified. Especially because he had no idea what was happening to his husband, but it didn’t feel like just a tumor exerting pressure on his brain. He remembered the scared voice of Yuuri’s grandmother when they first announced the news to his family, after he weirdly disappeared in the woods in the middle of the night.

“Nogitsune…”

Yuuri had brushed if off like it was some elder’s superstitious crap, and Victor knew he was right. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder sometimes, whenever he remembered the answer he got when he asked what a Nogitsune was.

“It’s a malignant fox spirit. The Nogitsune thrives on fear and pain and distress. It is said that he would sometimes take over the body of a human to entertain itself.” Mari had translated for Victor while Yuuri was watching everywhere but in his direction with an embarrassed look in his eyes.

Victor stared at his lover, unable to stop the worry taking place in his guts.

Yuuri immediately noticed and turned to him, dismissing the story with a laugh: “Don’t make that face! Victor! It’s just old people’s tales, it’s not real!” but it didn’t shake the uneasy bad feeling he had. Yuuri was right, of course. That was impossible. Just old traditions meant to explain the unexplainable when science couldn’t yet, but what if it  _ was _ more? He forced a smile. They never mentioned it again.

As Victor lay there, his arm wrapped around Yuuri, he could feel his even breath and the calm beating of his heart. He could almost forget that they were both falling apart ever since Yuuri got sick. He could almost forget the pain that he couldn’t do anything to help whenever a crisis arose and the fear and the fact that they would never go back to what they had before it all happened. He could almost trick himself into believing that they were back to the first days of Yuuri in Saint Petersburg. When Victor still couldn’t believe his luck to have Yuuri sleeping next to him. He would watch him sleep every night until he couldn’t keep his own eyes open. Every night, he would end up falling asleep with a smile on his face, their bodies so close he could hear his heartbeat. He would wake up, the next morning, with a shy kiss on his forehead and a soft voice, gently underlined by a Japanese accent, “Time to get up, Victor.”

Victor was finally falling asleep, at calm for the first time in months, sweetly stroking Yuuri’s hair. His hands brushed lightly against a small scar on the back of his neck. It was completely healed now, but the little scratch he had gotten from his night in the woods certainly had left a visible scar. His eyes were almost closed when he caught something that turned his insides upside down. It disappeared so fast it could have been a dream, yet he couldn’t help but have a very bad feeling about it. He could have sworn that, for a single moment, Yuuri was staring at him in the mirror of their room, and that his irises had turned an orange glow. He opened his eyes quickly, his sleepiness completely gone, only to see him peacefully asleep again.

Victor shivered. It was just his imagination, for sure, he was exhausted and troubled, and his mind had tricked him. Despite every fiber in his body telling him to back off from his partner, he got closer, brought his head to Yuuri’s neck and let it fall on his shoulder, hushing him gently.

“Don’t worry, Yuuri, we’re gonna be alright. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He wouldn’t take the easy path and get scared again.

**On the fourth day, Victor lost the only love of his life.**

They were standing on the ice, Yuuri had snapped in the middle of the day, that had never happened before. Except it probably had. How else would have Yuuri gotten the gun he just tried to shoot him with?

“Pull the trigger” said Yuuri. It was his lips who formed the words and the sound of his voice that left his mouth, yet it couldn’t have been further away from Yuuri’s voice. It cruelly lacked its warmth, its softness and even the self-doubt that sometimes took over it.

His fingers clenched around the gun. He vaguely heard Yurio’s horrified voice asking them what the hell they were playing at, but his entire focus was on Yuuri. Or whatever at taken possession of him. His hand shivered around the gun, he could feel Yuuri’s smirk mocking his doubts. He could never…

“Shoot me!” he said again, louder, the edge of anger piercing his voice. “Go ahead, pull the trigger! You’ll never see him again, anyway. He is not coming back.”

“What are you?”

“You know exactly what I am.”

_ Nogitsune. _

“You’re a spirit… Why are you doing this?”

The smirk was instantly back.

“Because his distress is delightful. Yours, as well, but if only you could hear him screaming in my brain...”

The creature delighted in his shocked silence for a few seconds before he screamed.

“SHOOT ME!”

That’s when Victor understood exactly what the monster wanted. If he pulled the trigger, he’d lose any hope to see Yuuri ever again and yet the monster would survive the wound.

_ Because he wasn’t a physical being. _

Yet if he didn’t pull the trigger… Wouldn’t he just be condemning Yuuri to live a prisoner of his own body, controlled by something none of them understood? The creature, whatever it was, had already won, it didn’t even have to fight for victory.

“It always amused me, you know,” Said Yuuri, obviously amused by the situation. “How difficult it is to take control of a human mind, how strong, how determined they can be.” The fox was playing with him. “That’s the funny thing…” he continued, “do you know how he lost the little control he had left? He dreamt you still loved him. That made him feel so happy, so safe that he lowered every single one of his guards at once. He was so, so sad these last days, you know? Feeling you drifting away from him. Knowing his disease had broken your relationship.”

Victor felt his throat close completely, he could barely breathe. He lowered the gun and slid closer to Yuuri, not caring one bit about the looks around him or the mocking expression displayed by the fox on his lover’s face. He brought his hand to Yuuri’s cheek and smiled. Acting as if he could still hear him somehow.

“I love you. I’ve loved you from the day we met. I’ll always love you, Yuuri Katsuki. I’m sorry I let you think otherwise.”

His arms moved to Yuuri’s back as he circled his body to pull it closer to him. As his lips got close to his ears, he murmured, “It’s gonna be alright.” He felt his hand tremble as he raised the gun to Yuuri’s neck. Victor could have sworn the fox was reveling in all of the distress going on around him. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

When he opened them again, he fad fallen to the floor, Yuuri’s now inert body still tightly hugged in his arms. He let go of the gun that was still firmly gripped in his hands, covered in blood, and shuddered violently when he realised the ice was completely stained. He gripped Yuuri’s body even clo…

 

“Did you just  _ kill me? _ ”

Yuuri was staring at Victor, taken aback. His words instantly took everyone out of roleplay, and Phichit sighed as he was cut in the middle of the game.

“You were possessed by a demon spirit!” Victor protested weakly, “I didn’t really have much choice.”

“You could have tried to find a way to bring me back!”

“ _ Yuu~riiii _ ,” Victor whined _. _ “Don’t be mad.”

Yuuri tried to shoot Victor a dirty look, but as soon as their eyes crossed, he felt his frustration disappear into thin air. He sighed and threw his arms in the air before leaning back in the chair.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmured before indicating Phichit to continue with a sign of his hand. When he caught Victor still watching him with puppy eyes, he shook his head and offered him a smile that meant ‘what am I going to do with you?’

Victor flashed him a smile back before getting back in the game as well.

Definitely, Yuuri couldn’t believe it. He felt a sudden spark of pain in his head and brought his hand to his neck only to find a small scratch on his nape. He let his head fall slightly backwards. As the light reflected in his eyes, a spark of orange flashed in them, but that was only the light, right? 


End file.
